The present invention relates generally to data communications. More particularly, the present invention relates to fast failover recovery for stackable network switches.
A stackable network switch comprises a plurality of stack units. Like regular network switches, each stack unit comprises ports, a forwarding engine, and a control plane processor. But each stack unit also includes one or more stacking interfaces for interconnecting the stack units via stacking links to form the stackable network switch, which acts as a single large switch.
Occasionally one of the stacking links will fail. Conventional failover solutions require the control plane processors to reconfigure the stacking interfaces to route traffic around the failed stacking link, and to reconfigure the original paths once the failed stacking link is restored. But because the control plane processors are involved, these failover solutions incur long system down times for the stackable network switch.